Avengers of the Midland Kingdoms
by prairiecrow
Summary: Lord Nikolas Fury has sworn to thwart the plans of the God Loki to overthrow the realms under the dominion of the current White Queen, and to that end he has set out to assemble a party of elite warriors: the Weapons Mage and his Fae-Born Healer, the Shadow Walker and the Striker From Afar, the Beast Within the Man and the Paladin Out Of Time. (Prequel to "Glamour" and "Hangover".)
1. Chapter 1

At the heart of the Midland Kingdoms, the immortal and the mortal met in a chamber of crimson and gold.

"_Lord Nikolas Fury._" The Voice of the August Presence vibrated with elegantly restrained power from behind the finely carven rosewood screen that shielded Her from merely mortal eyes, and Fury bowed low before it, reflecting that there was likely truth in the rumour that the current physical vessel of the White Queen had Fae blood somewhere in her distant past. She had clear talent with the singing magics, of that there was absolutely no doubt.

"My most Puissant Lady," he intoned. "I stand ready to execute Your slightest command." Which was both true and untrue — Her commands merely coincided with his own goals, for now — but he trusted his Jeratai mind training to keep those secrets safe even from Her nigh-omniscient sight.

"_You have assembled the lists for your unit?_"

"Indeed I have. The Weapons Mage and his Fae-Born Healer; the Shadow Walker and the Striker From Afar; the Beast Within the Man, and the Paladin Out Of Time. I await only Your permission to proceed."

"_Make it so, and do not fail Me — or the Midland Kingdoms shall fall before the Weaver of Lies._" A pause, surely not a hesitation. Surely not. "_His plot to overthrow Our dominion must be repelled with the greatest ferocity. I have placed my trust in your judgement, Son of Jeratai. Your life is forfeit if you fail to fulfill your sacred vows._"

He bowed again, and this time he kept his head lowered when he straightened. "They shall not fail, Your Eminence — rather, they shall triumph, and avenge the insult that has been cast in Your radiant face. This is my vow, and if I betray it I will face death gladly."

"_It is well spoken. Go, and walk with the blessings of darkness and of light._" The radiance beyond the screen turned away, its vision flashing across reaches beyond the audience chamber, and Fury took his leave, his heart beating serenely in his breast while his mind wove the relentless strands of a much bigger web than even the White Queen could possibly suspect.


	2. Chapter 2

Lord Antony Stark, master of Newarl Tor and protector of all Iosia in the guise of Iron Man, squinted at the intricate three-dimensional construct of light shining in the centre of his laboratory, stepped around to consider it from a slightly different angle, then spotted a way to increase efficiency and sketched the modifications in with his esoric stylus. The sunlight beyond the tall stained glass windows had faded to the darkness of a winter's night long since, but he never kept track of time while working on a new project. That was someone else's job — and a small refined cough from the archway behind him alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone.

He groaned a protest without looking round from the elaborate esoric blueprint: "Jarvis…"

The Fae-born entered the laboratory with a graceful feline stride, his short-cropped white-gold hair practically gleaming against the shadows of the walls as he headed for the one table with a couple of square feet that could become free space with a bit of rearranging. When he came up alongside Tony's position Tony saw that he was carrying a large covered silver tray in both black-gloved hands. "Sir, you last ate twelve and a half hours ago."

"Yes," Tony grumbled, "and I thoroughly stuffed myself. Oatmeal with cream and sugar, toast with nut butter, six pieces of bacon, three eggs, fried tubers —"

"— after having not eaten for eight hours before that," his body servant continued smoothly, balancing the laden tray deftly on one hand while using the other to clear enough space at one corner of the table to set down his burden. Those slender fingers dealt with paper, wire and small machine parts equally swiftly and decisively, but Tony knew that the displacement was not random and when he went to find those items later they'd not be hard to locate. "I've taken the liberty of having the kitchen prepare herdbeast ragout and a loaf of fresh lentil bread based on your maternal great-grandmother's favourite recipe."

In spite of himself, Tony felt his stomach clench and growl as the prospect of that flavour combination crossed his mind's palate. "Quf too?"

"I wouldn't dream of serving you a late supper without it, Sir." He set down the tray and lifted the lid with an elegant little flourish, releasing a cloud of mouth-watering steam redolent of meat, gravy, all Tony's favourite vegetables, hot bread, double-sweetened caffeinated beverage — and was that redfruit crumble on the side?

Another rumble from somewhere below the esoric reactor embedded in Tony's breastbone convinced him, grudgingly, to put aside the stylus and turn away from the glowing mid-air diagram. "You know, I'd get three times as much work done if you didn't keep interrupting me this way."

"Unlikely, Sir," Jarvis countered with a hint of a reserved smile, "as you'd have dropped dead of malnutrition long since without my periodic timely interventions — which are about to become more frequent, I'll give you fair warning.

"Hrm." Tony gave him an amused glance, reaching out to pat the Fae-born's waist with one grease-stained hand on his way past. Jarvis confined his reaction to getting oil on his frock coat to a discreet little wince, which Tony cheerfully ignored as he sat down in front of the tray and surveyed its contents with increasing enthusiasm. "It does look good, I have to admit." He nodded toward another stool at the next table over. "Pull up a seat, join me."

"Sir, I really must —"

He put on his most persuasive smile as he picked up his spoon. "C'mon, honey-heart, I haven't seen you in over twelve hours either, and I must say that I miss you more than I miss food, all things considered. I'll let you have half the redfruit crumble — you had them dish up an extra big bowlful, I can't help but notice." His eyes gleamed as he dipped up a big mouthful of the ragout, barely swallowing it before continuing: "Almost as if you planned on joining me, hm?"

Jarvis sighed as if asking the Geist for patience, but he retrieved the indicated stool and perched himself upon it at the other side of the table's corner, and helped himself.

"Extra spoon, too," Tony noted gleefully. "Jarvis, you sly dog! Beautiful, but sly."

"I _am_ Fae-born, Lord Stark."

"True." He found himself devouring the sight of that slender body and flawless face as avidly as the stew; even engaged in so utilitarian an act as eating, his servant couldn't seem to help but be as luminous and as perfectly composed as a portrait by L's'airat . "Is it possible you've grown even more lovely since I've started this project? I think it just might be."

Jarvis ate in neat bites — and small ones, savouring each tiny sweet mouthful. The Fae scarcely needed material sustenance at all although they were notorious for their taste for sweets, and Fae-born could subsist upon very little indeed. Unlike Tony, he swallowed fully before replying: "Need I remind you of the oft-quoted truism concerning absence and the human heart?"

Tony grinned. "I'm living it in action, right now." Another mouthful of stew, followed by a bite of fresh bread and a sip of quf, his gaze never leaving Jarvis's demurely downcast eyes. "You'll nourish me in that respect as well, won't you, once I've put away enough food to satisfy your concern for my stomach's wellbeing?"

A flash of sapphire eyes, full of more subtle light than the room's anbaric lamps could account for. A smile, slight but communicating a heat that went to Tony's heart like a moonlight blade. "I might be… persuaded, M'Lord._ If_ you eat well first, and agree to an interval of sleep afterwards."

Not for the first time, Tony thanked the Agents of the Old Laws for accepting ten years of his life on a Spring Equinox night twelve years previous in exchange for this treasure, even if it was currently trying to bargain him into bed for more than a vigorous romp while he was in the middle of solving an artifice puzzle. "If you succeed in exhausting me," _with that pretty pink mouth and with those hands that know every inch of me and with the wonder that is every submissive inch of _**_you_**_,_ "I'll take it under serious consideration."

"Then we have an agreement," Jarvis murmured, his smile growing even more — not suggestive, Jarvis was never that crude, but definitely… tempting, and teasing, and promising.

Tony was staring at his body servant, thinking of how good his cock was going to look sliding between those curved silken lips once he'd put away some more of this excellent ragout, when the lab's esoric perimeter alarm emitted an unseemly dying squawk and whine that faded to silence almost before Tony and Jarvis had raised their heads sharply and turned their gazes to the archway. A tall dark figure stood beneath it, clad in a long black coat with both hands clasped behind his back, his skin as richly hued as mahogany and his single eye piercingly bright.

"Lord Antony Stark," the stranger intoned in a sonorous voice.

Tony wasn't in the mood for pleasantries for any number of reasons — interrupted engineering, interrupted meal, a wrench thrown into the gears of promised lovemaking, the fact that his expertly designed system had somehow been circumvented. "Who the hell are you?" he demanded, dropping the spoon and rising to his feet. Jarvis remained seated, but the bowl and spoon were back on the tray and Tony could hear a dangerous note vibrating in the Fae-born's slender throat: singing magic on the verge of being unleashed, probably a glamour to daze the man who might pose a threat to his master. Tony laid one hand on his lover's slim shoulder: _Hold your action, for now._

The stranger inclined his head. "And it's Jarvis, isn't it, lately of the Court of Satvis Blood-Hand, Duke of the Twilight Lands?"

"If I were you," Tony said grimly, "I'd be less concerned with playing 'name that tune' and more concerned with telling me why I shouldn't have my security system blast you into a fine pink mist."

His smile was equally grim, but very bright. "Perhaps because your security system is no longer operational." He took a step into the room, and indeed, no engine dealt with him; now Jarvis rose to his feet as well, but Tony had already moved between him and the potential threat, fists clenched, ready to do battle even though he was clad only in light trousers and ankle boots, naked from the waist up. "There'll be no need for that, Lord Stark. I'm not here to offer you violence. I'm here to make you an offer."

Tony's eyes narrowed dangerously. Mentally he was calculating the distances to everything in the room that could possibly be used as a weapon, and hoping that Jarvis could find adequate cover if violence erupted. "What could you possibly offer that would be of interest to me, or that would redress the insult of this intrusion?"

The man's smile turned almost merry. "How does a series of thorny tactical challenges, the chance to engage an enemy which threatens the entirety of the Midland Kingdoms, and all the adventure you can handle sound?"

Tony considered that, and him, for a count of three before glancing sidelong over his shoulder, to see Jarvis looking down at him and offering a quick nod: his Fae-born senses had evidently perceived something that his master's had not, something that recommended giving this stranger a hearing. Tony turned his gaze back to the intruder, who appeared unarmed, but of course such appearances could be highly deceiving.

"It sounds… intriguing," he said carefully.

"It's a great deal more than that." He inclined his chin in a little bow. "But where are my manners? I am Lord Nikolas Fury of the White Queen's Shield, and I'm here on Her Majesty's business, not merely my own."

That made Tony's ears prick up. "The White Queen, eh?" Which made things potentially much more worthy of his consideration, given that Sovereign's reputation for bankrolling some highly daring military projects. "Can't say I've ever heard of this Shield you're referring to, though."

"You wouldn't have," Fury nodded, "considering that it's being constructed as we speak. Jarvis, would you mind bringing us some fresh quf? We have —"

Tony took a step forward, slow but full of menace. "Let's get one thing straight: nobody, and I mean _nobody_ gives my manservant orders except me. Is that clear?"

This time the quality of Fury's smile suggested that Tony had just revealed something of great value. "My apologies, Lord Stark. Quf, however, would be a very good idea. We have a great deal to discuss."

After a moment Tony nodded, grudging but intrigued, and heard the subliminal note fade to silence in Jarvis's throat. It looked like this night was going to turn out to be interesting in ways that he couldn't possibly have anticipated.


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha Romanov was one with the shadows — and as proverbial wisdom had it, the darkness possessed very keen eyes and ears indeed.

"It's uncanny, I tell you!" Count Gregor Kalagin was pacing before the glowing fireplace in his study with both hands clasped behind his slight back, speaking sharply and loudly enough for the anbaric communicator on his desk to clearly pick up every syllable of heavily accented Goreean. Against the wall beside the mantle stood his body servant, a tall impassive man with powerful hands folded before him and eyes almost as cold as the piercing winter night outside, which sparkled with stars beyond the finely joined glass windows that caught restless glints of the dancing firelight. "She is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, you could lose yourself in her ruby lips and her emerald eyes and the auburn waves of her hair, but the way she moves… Alexei, I swear she must be half Werean! One moment she's there, and the next she's gone!"

A male voice, higher in pitch, answered him soothingly from the artificial device: "_Gregori, calm yourself! Surely you must be mistaken? If the Egores saw no ill intent within her —_"

"Nothing!" Kalagin spat savagely. "Only the pretty daughter of a Chalean knight's widow, come to us for the Ice Moon Festival! And none have been more merry than she at the feasting and the dance! And yet…" He stopped in his tracks facing Natasha's position, his bullish head truculently lowered and his black moustache bristling. "Things happen when she's around. _Unpleasant_ things."

His brother laughed lightly across the ninety-seven leagues that separated this small stuffy room from his own palatial home outside of Seleka Township. "_Are you trying to tell me that a mere slip of a girl is responsible for four deaths? How? Did her loveliness simply cause their hearts to give way?_"

"One poisoning, one stabbing, and two found stark and staring in their beds," Kalagin snarled. "The Minister of the Interior among them — and _she _was seen with all of them before they came to their ends."

"_The poisoning I could believe — that's always been a woman's way — but stabbing is a nasty brutish business,_" the distant voice stated. "_The only females capable of it are insane. Is this girl mad?_"

Kalagin's narrow shoulders stiffened, and his next words were nearly growled: "If she is, it's a madness the likes of which I've never before beheld."

Natasha did not smile. She could not, in her present form. But cold amusement shimmered through the fragile tissue of her substance, which lay blended within the shadows behind a marble bust of L's'airat that adorned the study wall at right angles to the fireplace: the state of her sanity had been debated by better men than this nervous little tyrant and his debauched brother, but she nevertheless found herself curious to hear what conclusion they'd come to… curious enough to stay her hand, for the moment.

"She's as warm and as sweet as you could wish a woman to be," Kalagin was continuing, "and she sings and dances like a dream made flesh — men flock to her like flies to a Tarik vase full of clover honey. I'll admit that I found her nearly worthy of a tumble myself. But when you get close enough to gaze into her eyes…" He paused. He shook his head. "There's nothing there, Alexei. She's as empty and black as the Mines of Morelik. I took one look and backed away as if from an adder."

In spite of herself Natasha was surprised and impressed by her target's rare depth of perception — and by his ability to hide that reaction from her at the moment it had occurred. At the time he'd bowed and claimed a pressing engagement in way that she hadn't found reason to doubt. He was more dangerous than she'd estimated, and even if she hadn't been operating under orders to terminate him the fact that he'd deceived _her_ would have been more than enough to warrant his death.

From out in the night, a tap in the forefront of her mind: _/What was that?/_

_/Nothing worth mentioning./_ She'd share the cause for the emotional ripple Clint had picked up on later — perhaps._/Are you in position?/_

It was a conversational diversion — Clint Barton never failed to execute his duties on a strike with perfect efficiency, even on nights when he had to perch in a winter-bare tree in bone-numbing cold — but the Arcane Archer did not question it. _/Ready./_

Alexei was still speaking in that laughing tone: "_Yet she has no shortage of lovers, you say? Are you surrounded by incompetents, incapable of seeing a snake when it's right in front of them? I think it's more likely that your own paranoia is getting the better of you — again._"

Kalagin shook his head. "I know what I saw," he insisted.

"_And why have you called me at this ungodly hour? To ask me what to do about your pretty little problem?_"

"No. I issued the order for her not half an hour ago." He straightened more, then sighed, his shoulders slumping fractionally. "Only… damn me to the Ninth Hell, she _is_ intolerably beautiful. I'll be dreaming of her smile long after her ebon soul is dispatched Below and her body's been consigned to the fires."

/_Now,_/ Natasha sent.

A window pane shattered. The body servant looked round sharply, then looked surprised, then fell forward on his face with a poisoned arrow in his thick throat.

As for Kalagin, he did not turn in the direction of the sound of breaking glass. He was too busy staring at Natasha as she stepped out of the impossibly narrow shadows and into full form again, clad all in gleaming skin-tight black, her hair a cascade of dark flame in the firelight. Before he could even open his mouth to speak she had reached him and Touched him, and his lips did part then, a final shock of indrawn breath and widened hazel eyes as his soul was drawn from his body and into her hand.

She gazed down at his fallen body, which seemed even smaller in death. And she smiled, the faintest curve of the full lips whose alluring venom he had once longed to kiss.

Another tap that penetrated her mental shields on a recognized frequency, this one more imperative than Clint's — the impact of a mail-clad fist on an iron door: _/Return to base, both of you./_

Clint, not surprised, but keenly questioning: _/Is it the Initiative at last?/_ But the unmistakeable Jeratai flavour of Lord Fury's mind-touch had already been withdrawn — and after all, what need was there for further conversation? Orders were orders, and Natasha and Clint were Fury's most trusted soldiers.

But for an instant their minds sang together with one predatory note of delight — satisfaction in a mission well accomplished, pleasure in a clean kill, anticipation of what was to come, joy in their bond that united them in body, in mind and in soul, an entwining of spirits which made the meeting of lips pale in comparison.

Natasha tucked Gregor Kalagin's paralyzed soul safely within herself and shadow-walked through the window's glass, leaving his brother's voice calling to the empty room, and once she'd joined her partner they headed south as commanded across the desolate winter landscape of the Northern Empire, never once looking back.


End file.
